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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/22672414">Stories of the Second Self: Behold, Thou Gruesome Act</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/John_Steiner/pseuds/John_Steiner'>John_Steiner</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Alter Idem [121]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Addams Family (Movies), Urban Fantasy - Fandom</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-02-12</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-02-12</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-04-28 17:28:48</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Not Rated</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,031</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/22672414</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/John_Steiner/pseuds/John_Steiner</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>The vampires Lindsay and Austin are settling into their new apartment in the Reading District of Cincinnati. Austin announces that he landed a stage performance for himself and Lindsay that involves them playing Shakespeare as if they were Wednesday and Pugsley of the Addams Family. Having chosen an scene renown for being among Shakespeare's most graphic, Titus Andronicus, Lindsay has to help prepare Austin for his part and assume the role of Titus' antagonist in a gory and comedic portrayal.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Alter Idem [121]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1618813</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Stories of the Second Self: Behold, Thou Gruesome Act</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>While going through her laundry, Lindsay had the lights off, but the heat from clothes freshly out of the dryer were enough to light up the whole room. However, when the outer front door of the apartment opened she stopped everything and went to the kitchen archway to see who was coming.</p><p>The outer door close, and then the inner one opened to reveal Austin. Lindsay's concern was that the Silverton vampire woman and werewolf lumberjack dude were breaking in. She'd been with Austin for four years now, ever since they both spontaneously turned into vampires.</p><p>"Lindsay," he called out, "I got us a gig."</p><p>"A gig?" Lindsay repeated, "As in what?"</p><p>"I was over in that D&amp;D den and happened to mention that you were the drama club back in high school," Austin explained.</p><p>"Do you always volunteer my life story to everyone?" Lindsay admonished, stepped out and folding her arms.</p><p>"I figured we could trust them," Austin replied sheepishly.</p><p>"They just let that cop come right over to us," Lindsay reminded.</p><p>"Yeah, but what could they do otherwise?" Austin wondered, and held up his hands. "Anyway, they want us to do a bunch of Wednesday and Pugsley Shakespeare scenes."</p><p>"I didn't do that much Shakespeare," Lindsay said, having not quite registered everything he said. "Wait a minute, what kind?"</p><p>"You know, from that Addams Family movie?" Austin answered, "The part where the two kids do that bit with the sword fight and blood spraying all over? They want us to do a whole bunch of really gory shit from Shakespeare's other plays as if we were those kids grown up."</p><p>Lindsay could almost hear her own eye roll. "Really Austin?"</p><p>"It's not like we actually gotta cut each other up," Austin defended.</p><p>"I thought they were into the whole roll playing game thing?" Lindsay said, as she went to the couch and dropped into it.</p><p>"Well," Austin paused, "They are, just they like other stuff too. They're not that removed from normal people. It's not about playing for the crowd, it's about the free drinks that come with it."</p><p>"So they're donating for free," Lindsay deduced, "All of them?"</p><p>"Everyone who attends, was what they told me," Austin answered, "Remember the early days after we turned, when the Baby Bats wanted us to do all those Interview and Queen of the Damned scenes?"</p><p>"You made a very poor Lestat, as I recall," Lindsay pointed out.</p><p>"So, should I tell them no?" Austin held his hands out.</p><p>Lindsay looked off to the side for a moment. She didn't miss being around normal people, but she found herself realizing she longed to pretend being normal people, even if that meant being as fucked up in the head as Shakespearean characters. Wednesday and Pugsley Addams now seemed fairly normal compared to four years of Alter Idem.</p><p>"Okay, let's do it," Lindsay agreed.</p><p>"Yes!" Austin shook a fist in triumph.</p><p>Since fleeing their hometown four years ago, Lindsay didn't have a lot, and only last year, when they got the apartment, could she start buying more than she could carry on her back in a rush. However, even at that she didn't have any costumes or other clothing that could pass as being medieval or renaissance.</p><p>Yet, calling the D&amp;D den Lindsay found they were willing to lend out from a wardrobe they kept for cosplay events. Many of the longtime members were willing to serve as a makeup crew. It left Lindsay one thing to cover, which were the Shakespearean plays themselves. She, and especially Austin, had a lot of rehearsal to go through.</p><p>Over a couple weeks, when not at their night jobs, Lindsay realized Austin had something of a knack for it. Austin said of the Shakespearean English, that it made no sense to him, however that somehow meant he was better at recital. He likened it to rhythm and lyrics of hip-hop that he listened to.</p><p>When came their first performance night, Lindsay and Austin were ready. Since the state of Ohio now allowed undead people to drive, Lindsay and Austin were able to get a used car through the fiduciary who handled their finances. Austin drove down to the D&amp;D den, and Lindsay saw a long line leading into the front entrance.</p><p>"They expect us to preserve donations from all that?" Lindsay wondered.</p><p>"Oh, no," Austin explained, "They're not going to give their full 470, and the manager said he'd keep a preserve open for us. It's kinda like having a tab at a bar."</p><p>Lindsay turned to Austin, and found the self-satisfied grin on his face from the pun he thought so clever. She couldn't help herself and chuckled.</p><p>Given the crowds, Austin drove around back and parked in the employee part of the lot. Then he and Lindsay entered through a back door, and were led to large closet that doubled as the place's green room. There, she and Austin changed clothes.</p><p>Lindsay was going to play Tamora, Queen of the Goths, which, for irony sake, she'd dress as a modern goth. Meanwhile, Austin was going to be Titus Andronicus from the play named for his character, but in a in a bathrobe with a sleeve missing and the other so long it covered his hand.</p><p>Specifically, they were going to perform Act V, Scene 2.</p><p>From Lindsay's memory, it was Shakespeare's most over-the-top violent and gruesome play, which when she had explained the scene, excited Austin all the more. During the performance, he really got into it, and made slashing gestures with the knife he held in the one hand his character still had left. The motion flicked fake blood everywhere, which drew riotous laughter for the fact no one had yet died in the scene.</p><p>Lindsay's role in the scene was to convince Titus that he was imagining Tamora as a Gothic incarnation of Revenge herself, and that her sons, Chiron and Demetrius were in fact Murder and Rapine.</p><p>After Lindsay exited the stage, she peeked in on Austin's ending delivery, where he pretended to go all ham on Chiron and Demetrius while speaking.</p><p>"Come, come, Lavinia; look, thy foes are bound. Sirs, stop their mouths, let them not speak to me; But let them hear what fearful words I utter. O villains, Chiron and Demetrius!" Austin bombastically called out, and made a convincing stab into the palm of Chiron's hand.</p><p>The character screamed, and Lindsay wonder how much was acted, for Austin appeared a bit reckless in the moment.</p><p>Austin swept up another knife from a table of many weapons. "Here stands the spring whom you have stain'd with mud, This goodly summer with your winter mix'd."</p><p>With that, Austin then made like he plunged the second blade into the other hand, pinning Chiron to the butcher's table.</p><p>"You kill'd her husband, and for that vile fault. Two of her brothers were condemn'd to death. My hand cut off and made a merry jest;" Austin declared, and raised his arm where his hand was covered up, and then he pointed off to his side with the stump that dripped more fake blood. "Both her sweet hands, her tongue, and that more dear. Than hands or tongue, her spotless chastity, Inhuman traitors, you constrain'd and forced."</p><p>The character, Demetrius was next placed onto a table by cosplayers dressed up as legionnaires and held down.</p><p>"What would you say, if I should let you speak?" Austin demanded while slashing Demetrius across the stomach, producing a comically long squirt of blood against a curtain. "Villains, for shame you could not beg for grace," whereon, Austin then slashed at Chiron's throat, "Hark, wretches! how I mean to martyr you. This one hand yet is left to cut your throats, Whilst that Lavinia 'tween her stumps doth hold. The basin that receives your guilty blood."</p><p>To emphasize the point, Austin drew a plastic axe blade down Demetrius' body from sternum to groin. It cued someone unseen to turn a value, so that syrupy blood oozed out from under the actor for Demetrius and drip off all sides of the table within a few seconds.</p><p>"You know your mother means to feast with me, and calls herself Revenge, and thinks me mad," Austin announced, while raise high one longsword prop that he then plunged down just under the armpit of Demetrius, but through the clothes to fulfill the state illusion of staking him screaming to the table. After, Austin selected another for the second armpit stabbing.</p><p>And Austin's delivery rose in tempo and the spirit of the moment. "Hark, villains! I will grind your bones to dust. And with your blood and it I'll make a paste!"</p><p>As part of the line, Austin ripped out fake entrails from Demetrius, really long balloons filled with gore that he deliberately popped for ghoulish effect.</p><p>"And of the paste a coffin I will rear. And make two pasties of your shameful heads," Austin describe, as he swung the axe down onto Chiron's neck.</p><p>The suddenness with which Austin stopped had even Lindsay jump where she stood, concerned that maybe Austin really did hurt the other actor. Yet, the guy's body convulsion went off with enough absurdity that Lindsay figured he must be okay. Austin slipped a clothe over Chiron's head, and the Chiron actor shifted so that he could lower his head into a hollow, while Austin lifted the clothe as if he'd taken the head within it.</p><p>"And bid that strumpet, your unhallow'd dam," Austin so ordered the spastic quivering Demetrius. "Like to the earth swallow her own increase."</p><p>"This is the feast that I have bid her to," Austin raved on, while scooping up multiple armloads of guts from around Demetrius, much to the audience's roaring cackles.</p><p>Under the table, Lindsay knew there were three people handing up bucket after bucket of cosmetic guts for Austin to drag over to a large pot, as he foretold Titus' recipe, "And this the banquet she shall surfeit on. For worse than Philomel you used my daughter. And worse than Progne I will be revenged. And now prepare your throats."</p><p>Again, laughter boiled over from the audience, because this was where the violence of the scene originally started, yet Austin had pretty much butchered the characters long before.</p><p>"Lavinia, come," Austin bid, and then took Demetrius' head, "Receive the blood," which Austin hurled generously around the stage, and even into the audience who recoiled in good humor, "and when that they are dead, <br/>let me go grind their bones to powder small."</p><p>Austin picked up a mace and began to beat the supposed heads of the sons of Tamora, which in fact where red syrup soaked heads of lettuce that gave off just the right amount of squish and crunch to bring amused grimaces from the crowd.</p><p>"And with this hateful liquor temper it," Austin decreed, pointing his still bleeding stump randomly, "And in that paste let their vile heads be baked. Come, come, be every one officious. To make this banquet; which I wish may prove more stern and bloody than the Centaurs' feast. So, now bring them in, for I'll play the cook, And see them ready 'gainst their mother comes."*</p><p>And, end scene, Lindsay thought in her mind, just as Austin dropped his head while curtains closed. Applause exploded, with whistles and calls following throughout the room.</p><p>Austin came backstage. "Well, what'd you think?"</p><p>"Oh my god," Lindsay cried out, not fearing she were heard over the audience, as Austin and she embraced. "You have a calling!"</p><p>"That good?" Austin leaned back, though still held her. "Really?"</p><p>"It was--," Lindsay paused, as being a vampire she had to consciously inhale before talking, though otherwise he'd taken her breath away, "Exquisite! Oh my god! We gotta do this more often!"</p><p>The actors for Chiron and Demetrius came back, both utterly dripping with cosmetic blood and syrup. The Chiron actor gave Austin a thumbs up as he praised, "Holy fuckin' shitballs, dude! That was cool!"</p><p>Lindsay looked at the backstage curtain on hearing the audience call out, and said to Austin, "It's time to take your well earned bow."</p>
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